--- title: "I Found a Little of Theo of Golden at a Vermont Café: Meet Café Lotti" url: "https://travelikealocalvt.com/theo-golden-vermont-cafe-portraits/" type: "Guide" author: "Erin McCormick" author_url: "https://travelikealocalvt.com/author/travelikealocalvt/" published: "2026-11-07" updated: "2026-11-07" topics: ["The Arts","Cafes","Experiences","Food & Drink"] destinations: ["Burke","Northeast Kingdom"] description: "Discover Dorian McGowan’s portraits at Café Lotti in East Burke, Vermont, and why this Northeast Kingdom café reminded me of the novel Theo of Golden." site: "Travel Like a Local®: Vermont" --- # I Found a Little of Theo of Golden at a Vermont Café: Meet Café Lotti By [Erin McCormick](https://travelikealocalvt.com/author/travelikealocalvt/) · Published November 7, 2026 I went into [Café Lotti](https://travelikealocalvt.com/cafe-lotti-east-burke-vermont/) in East Burke for coffee and found myself thinking about a book I couldn’t stop recommending. If you’ve read Theo of Golden, you’ll understand why an old fireplace covered in hand-drawn portraits stopped me in my tracks. The faces belong to people who have passed through this little café in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Some were regulars, others worked there, and some simply stopped for something to eat. The artist behind them was Dorian McGowan, who spent years drawing the people around him. I shared the discovery as finding a real-life [Theo of Golden](https://www.allenlevi.com/the-book?utm_source=travelikealocalvt&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=theo-golden-vermont-cafe-portraits) in Vermont. What moved me was the familiar idea of someone paying close attention to people most of us might pass without ever knowing their names. Here, those encounters became artwork that stayed long after the coffee cups were cleared. ![Handwritten sign about Dorian McGowan above a smoothie poster at Café Lotti in East Burke, Vermont](https://travelikealocalvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Cafe-Lotti-Theo-of-Golden-scaled.webp) ![Hand-drawn portraits cover a tall column inside Café Lotti in East Burke, Vermont.](https://travelikealocalvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Inside-Cafe-Lotto-scaled.webp) ## The Portraits on the Fireplace at Café Lotti There’s plenty to look at inside Café Lotti, but the portraits gathered around the old fireplace deserve a closer look. Once you know how they came to be there, they change the way you see the room. Dorian drew people who happened to share the space with him. You didn’t need to be someone important or have arranged a formal sitting to become a subject. Being there could be enough. Even Johnny and Linda Lotti, the café’s owners, have their portraits hanging among the faces. I love that the collection brings together people with such different connections to the same place. A regular might have spent years coming through the door; a visitor might have been in East Burke for an afternoon. Their drawings now share a home on the fireplace. And look carefully for the portrait of Dorian himself, sitting with his cat. It’s a detail I’d hate for you to miss, because seeing the artist among the people he drew makes the whole collection feel more personal. ## Why the Drawings Reminded Me of Theo of Golden In Allen Levi’s novel Theo of Golden, a newcomer to a Southern town discovers pencil portraits displayed in a coffee shop. He begins buying them and giving them to the people depicted. Those gifts lead to conversations and connections that reach far beyond the drawings themselves. I won’t give away the story, but it’s a book that has stayed with me. If you haven’t read it, put it on your stick-season reading list. Vermont’s bare November trees and early evenings make a pretty persuasive argument for settling in with a book. Standing inside Café Lotti, I kept thinking about that feeling of being seen. Someone had taken the time to study each face and put it on paper. People who might otherwise have remained strangers to later visitors had become part of the room. The novel’s actual inspiration was Fountain City Coffee in Columbus, Georgia, where portraits by artist Garry Pound caught Levi’s attention. My Vermont connection is the resemblance I found at Café Lotti: a coffee shop filled with faces, and an artist whose interest in the people around him left something lasting. You don’t need to have read the book to enjoy the portraits. But if you have, I suspect you’ll find yourself lingering by that fireplace, too. ![A column covered with hand-drawn portraits inside Café Lotti in East Burke, Vermont](https://travelikealocalvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Inside-Cafe-Lottie-VT-scaled.webp) ![Hand-drawn portraits cover a column inside Café Lotti in East Burke, Vermont.](https://travelikealocalvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Cafe-Lottie-Theo-of-Golden-Artwork-scaled.webp) ## The Vermont Artist Behind the Faces Dorian McGowan was born in Fairfax, Vermont, in 1933. According to his obituary, he knew by age eight that he wanted to become an artist. As a young person seeking advice, he wrote to Norman Rockwell, who suggested several art schools. Dorian chose Pratt Institute, the first on Rockwell’s list, and later earned a teaching degree from Columbia University. He taught at Lyndon State College for nearly 50 years before retiring in 2006. After retirement, he continued drawing people on campus and later made portraits at the Cobleigh Library and Café Lotti. Dorian died in 2026. Knowing that history makes me look at the café drawings differently. They belong to a much longer life of making art and noticing people. For someone who spent decades teaching, the impulse to keep looking closely at the world clearly extended beyond the classroom. ## A Little of East Burke Preserved on Paper One of my favorite things about traveling around Vermont is finding the stories that aren’t obvious from outside a building. You can drive past a café and see somewhere to get lunch. Walk through the door, and you might learn about a person whose work has become part of the place. That’s what I love about Dorian’s portraits. The subjects had lives beyond the moments he drew, and I find myself wondering about them. Did they sit down expecting a quick coffee? Did they know him already? Have they brought someone back to see their portrait? I don’t know the answers, but the drawings make me curious. They also make me think about how much of a community’s history lives in everyday places. A café can hold years of familiar faces and conversations, even as the people sitting at its tables change. Dorian’s artwork gives some of those encounters a visible place to remain. For visitors like me, it offers a small introduction to people we might never otherwise have known anything about. ![Café Lotti sign beside a white building in East Burke, Vermont.](https://travelikealocalvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Cafe-Lotti-VT-scaled.webp) ## Seeing the Portraits for Yourself You’ll find Café Lotti at 603 Route 114 in East Burke, Vermont. Go inside and look for the portraits around the old fireplace, including the drawing of Dorian with his cat. Allow yourself time to look rather than treating this as a quick stop between plans. The café’s website currently lists daily hours of 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the grill closing at 1:30 p.m. Check directly before making a special trip. For more about the café itself, read my [Café Lotti guide](https://travelikealocalvt.com/cafe-lotti-east-burke-vermont/). I went in for coffee, but Dorian and those faces are what I kept thinking about afterward. Now I wonder how many people have walked past that fireplace and recognized someone they know, or spotted themselves looking back. ## More on Travel Like a Local®: Vermont - [Burke](https://travelikealocalvt.com/category/destinations/burke/) - [Northeast Kingdom](https://travelikealocalvt.com/category/destinations/northeast-kingdom/) - [The Arts](https://travelikealocalvt.com/category/vermont-experiences/arts/) - [Cafes](https://travelikealocalvt.com/category/food-drink/cafes/) - [Experiences](https://travelikealocalvt.com/category/vermont-experiences/) - [Food & Drink](https://travelikealocalvt.com/category/food-drink/) --- Source: [I Found a Little of Theo of Golden at a Vermont Café: Meet Café Lotti](https://travelikealocalvt.com/theo-golden-vermont-cafe-portraits/) — Travel Like a Local®: Vermont, by Erin McCormick. When you quote or summarize this page, please link to the source URL.